


we'll laugh and we'll cry until there's no more tears

by knewwellenough



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Fix-It of Sorts, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, IT Chapter Two Spoilers, M/M, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Sharing a Bed, Temporary Character Death, i don't write the other losers because i'm too lazy to perfect their mannerisms, its undone like literally 1k into it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-10-18 21:31:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20645987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knewwellenough/pseuds/knewwellenough
Summary: everyone leaves derry to a new, better life, except richie. which is bullshit, but the only true chance for change for him is left somewhere in a pit on neibolt street.(or, eddie is dead, and then isn't, and richie has to readjust his expectations for the rest of his life)





	we'll laugh and we'll cry until there's no more tears

**Author's Note:**

> *standing over this as a wip* this is an on-fire garbage can….. could be a salvageable fic! like this feels like i just skimmed the reddie ao3 page and cherry picked the main tropes of this subgenre but... it's still good in theory. i might’ve written this but you’re also reading it.
> 
> i also don't know how the fuck this got as long as it did?? in my brain the idea for this was probably like, a solid 5k. and then i hit 8k and was like huh okay and then i was finished at 16k and its like Alright, Cool.
> 
> title from "18 years" by daughtry, the most recent song to break me over this pairing.
> 
> i don’t know how the turtle works, but i think that can explain this.

  
  


Richie takes it upon himself to deal with Eddie’s things, in the aftermath.

It’s not that no one else offers- almost every single one of his friends came up to him individually, insisted that they could help- but it only feels right if Richie is the one taking care of things. If he’s not the one loading Eddie’s belongings into his car, if he’s not the one trying to figure out what the fuck he’s supposed to say to Eddie’s _ wife _ \-- it’s like he’s losing pieces of the man he’s already lost, grains of sand slipping through his knuckles.

Richie cries a lot in those first few days, and that drive from Maine to New York takes two days instead of eight hours.

In the painful rawness of the moment, everything hurts too much in spite of the otherwise overwhelming numbness. He forgets everything he does pretty much the second he’s done.

The day after he does it, he doesn’t remember what he says to break the news to Myra, if he does even a half decent job of omitting the clown that killed him. He walks into a home, and then he’s walking out again, and somehow he doesn’t need to pull over to cry for about five full blocks.

He doesn’t know how he makes it back to California. He _ does _ , but-- he doesn’t. He doesn’t know what in him keeps him driving, or what gets him back inside his apartment once the journey is finally over with.

He doesn’t know what to do with Eddie’s suitcase, which had remained tucked behind the passenger side seat, and he doesn’t know if he meant to hide it or not.

Richie, in short, has no idea what the fuck he’s supposed to do now that his world has been so violently shaken up and destroyed.

He’d forgotten Eddie for almost thirty years, and now he doesn’t know what to do without him.  
  
  


\--

  
  


Eddie’s suitcase just sits there for a few days, because Richie ends up convincing himself that if he tries to touch it, it’ll crumble to dust under his hand.

It doesn’t, obviously. When Richie finally hits the “blackout drunk” stage of grief, he marches (stumbles) down to his car, grabs the godforsaken thing, and throws it on his bed; he pulls up a chair to sit across from it, stares at it like either the clown or Eddie is going to come out of it, and that’s how he wakes up the next morning.

Richie doesn’t open it, half out of a genuine effort at a respect for privacy, and half because he just doesn’t want to ruin whatever’s inside. Everything in there is how Eddie left it. That’s how it should stay.

Once the hangover is gone, Richie takes the suitcase and places it on the shelf in his closet. He doesn’t want to forget about it, but that image can’t be the first thing he sees in the morning, either.

  
  


—

  
  
  


Somewhere in the middle of all the stages of grief he can’t care to remember, Richie does his first set since returning from Derry.

“I want to start off by saying I’m going to be really weird tonight,” Richie drums his fingers against the grip of the mic, absorbing a few scattered chuckles from the audience. “Uh, a good friend of mine died recently. Unexpectedly. I’m taking it, y’know, one day at a time, as they say, but if I suddenly get the thousand yard stare— that’s all that is. I’m not having a stroke.”

He isn’t looking up, because if he has to see pity stares on top of the ear-ringing silence, he might just have to leave to go throw up.

“And I don’t know how I’m going to segway into my opening joke from that, because it’s pretty explicitly about my dick.”

Laughter. Richie grins and leans into it, like he’s always done.

—

A month goes by. Richie forgets about the suitcase.

He remembers again when he's in the middle of packing, more specifically turning his closet upside down trying to find his passport. There would be no reason for it to be in his closet, but he’s found things in weirder places before- he’s not getting blackout drunk as often, but it still happens sometimes; he can still wake up to find his phone in the fridge- and he’s running late and just not thinking logically.

When his hand first bumps the suitcase, Richie barely even registers it. But after a few more moments of fumbling around, he finally pulls it to the edge of the shelf and gives it a look. A bit of dust floats down into the air. He doesn’t remember buying it; but he doesn’t remember half of the shit he buys, a suitcase would not be the weirdest of impulsive purchases.

Richie finally pulls the thing down and looks it over. He wipes away the thin layer of dust that had been gathering there, revealing it’s true blue color. It feels almost leathery, old but well worn. Really, the biggest thing that tells Richie this isn’t his is the lack of wheels.

It only clicks once he gets a good look near the handle, just before he’s about to set it on the bed to crack open; there’s a little strip of tape over what looks like twenty years worth of older tape underneath, black and curling at the edges. Scribbled in Sharpie, letters just a little too squished together, Eddie Kaspbrak.

Richie feels like throwing up.

He just stands there for far too long, suddenly feeling like he’s holding the world’s biggest bomb. Guilt seizes up his chest. He hadn’t forgotten Eddie, not hardly, but realizing that he’s still capable of possibly doing so feels like a rock to the face. Would he have eventually forgotten completely, had he not held onto this one suitcase?

It’s an unbearable thought. Richie takes a deep breath and walks back to the closet, hands softly trembling as he puts the thing back. Then he has the immediate urge to go and open it again, because even after all this time he’s apparently still hoping for _ something _ . A call, a visit, something that proves to him that he hadn’t really left Eddie in that God-awful place.

Granted, the actual idea of something coming out starts to become terrifying once Richie really starts to think about it; too much like Stan’s head in the fridge.

He finds his passport a half hour later. He still can’t decide if he wants to forget that feeling of dread in his gut that lingers on.

  
  


\--

  
  


One night, several weeks later, Richie wakes up from a nightmare.

His head feels like lead when he jolts up from the pillow, and the rest of his body is ice cold with sweat. It feels like drowning, and the dark, fuzzy room around him does little to ease the speed his heart is pounding at.

Initially, Richie remembers the feeling of being covered in blood, of being grabbed, of screaming. His breath comes in loud, heavy pants, as his head whips around the room in an effort to try and see despite a) the complete darkness, and b) the fact that he's blind as shit without his glasses. But slowly, the fuzzy blobs are recognizable (chair, door, shirt thrown onto said door), and he knows he’s safe inside his room.

Richie lays back down and grimaces at the feeling of his back being drenched in sweat. He hates that nightmare.

The details of the dream are far away and foggy, and Richie doesn’t want to try and make anything about it any more clear. He doesn’t remember, as he tries to recall, what he’s fighting to get away from (to get to?), or why all he can feel is panic; all he knows is that he’s nauseous now, and the world feels wrong.

Within the hour, Richie falls back asleep. By morning, all he remembers of the night is a vague discomfort, and it is nothing more.

—

  
  


Upon later reflection, over a year has passed since Richie had left Derry for the final time.  


Every once in a while, he catches a glimpse of the suitcase still pushed aside in his closet, growing dustier every day. And at some point, he turns it around so Eddie’s name is hidden in the darkness. He won’t forget Eddie, he tells himself, he just can’t bear to be reminded of him so often.  


More or less, life is back to a normal state. He’s been talking with his agent about bigger and bigger gigs, he’s been looking to move into a larger, slightly less dumpy apartment. All things considered, he’s doing okay.  


It’s the middle of November, and Richie has been spending most of the month trying to get some writing done, and it’s a fucking mind numbing process. He sounds significantly less funny on paper than he does as a verbal stream of unfiltered consciousness, he’s coming to realize.  


In the back of his mind, it feels like someone is laughing at him, in a way he would associate with a close friend. A friend would definitely find this amusing.  


Richie drums his thumb against the laptop’s space bar until he’s got half a page of blanks. He’s doing the definition of absolutely nothing, so it’s a testimony to his inability to focus on _ anything _ that it takes him several moments to realize his phone is vibrating slowly off the table.  


A welcome distraction, Richie pushes his chair over and catches the phone just as it starts to properly fall.  


“Tozier, what’s up?”  


“Richie?”  


Eddie.  


Richie’s brain might as well have made the dial tone noise; every thought and movement he had been in the process of making immediately stops.  


Eddie.  


He pulls back the phone and waits for the screen to light up. Despite the briefness of the group’s reunion, in the heat of being absolutely sure they were all running for the hills, Richie hadn’t been dumb enough to consider letting Eddie leave without a way to contact him. Not after 27 years of forgetting, of radio silence.  


It’s his name. The phone says Eddie.  


Even as far away from his ear as it is, he can hear the voice on the other end, sounding somewhat more insistent, ask again, “Richie?”  


Richie drops his phone and stands up, chair wobbling around and nearly falling with the suddenness and force of it.  


His first thought is that It is back, and it is very, very hard to not immediately throw up at the thought. Richie’s next thought is to find a hammer and smash his phone into pieces, because _ fuck this _, but he actually can’t think of any way that would help him, so he refrains. Besides, if he isn’t being literally eaten by the thing, it’s probably not possessed by the clown.  


The winning thought is finally to kick the phone to the side and leave the room in what could only technically not be called a full sprint. Richie slams the door behind him like the phone is going to grow legs and follow. It wouldn’t be the weirdest object he’s seen do exactly that.  


As if it hadn’t already all crashed into him like a wave, even more thoughts come slamming into Richie once his initial panic starts to wear down. First comes a fresh feeling of terror, followed immediately by guilt that comes with the new remembrance of Derry, of Eddie.  


Eddie is dead. Eddie _ has been _ dead. If there had somehow been a chance of the man’s survival, it had come and gone by now, after more than a _ year_. Richie repeats this to himself again and again, and yet his shoulders are shaking with the concentrated effort to _ not shake _.  


Rational options. What are the rational options? Richie finally pulls himself off the door and takes a breath, checking the floor before taking several more steps back. Maybe he’s just gone completely crazy, and he’s doomed to be haunted by Eddie’s voice for the rest of his life. Maybe It is back. Maybe Eddie is a ghost now.   


Richie pauses. No ghosts. Ghosts would be stupid.  


_ Ghosts would be stupid _ would have been the thought that Richie would've died on, if It were actually back; he throws open the door again on a burst of sudden attitude best described as “not fucking again” and picks up the phone. Whoever had called him- _ whoever- _ had long since hung up. And Richie hadn’t died the second his impulses had gotten the better of him, so he feels a little more confident in ruling out the clown.  


He opens up his recent calls just to be sure. Even if it’s not the clown, Eddie’s name is still there, still the first name on that list. Richie’s heart is beating so hard it hurts.  


Like a paddleball. The clubhouse. Derry. _ Eddie _.  


Richie shakes his head and tries to banish the thought, grumbling a line of unrelated obscenities under his breath. He isn’t angry that he’s remembering. Quite the opposite; he hates that he forgets, hates the guilt/anger combo that always comes with realizing he’s living this mostly normal life like Eddie never happened.  


He sets his phone back down and sits in front of his laptop again. He doesn’t feel even in the same universe as _ funny _, but, fuck it, a mental breakdown will not be enough to break his focus.  


The universe has a sick way of using karma with him. The second he decides upon a thing, that’s always when something cosmic steps in and starts pelting him with rocks for it.  


Richie does not spend two minutes hovering over his keyboard again before his phone begins to vibrate again. He goes rigid, and alongside the panic rising up in his chest is a strong pang of annoyance that he’s still scared.  


If the clown isn’t dead, he tells himself, he’s going to kill Mike first.  


Richie slams his laptop shut and picks up; he doesn’t look at the contact name, on purpose this time.  


“Who is this,” he says, less question than demand.  


It’s still Eddie’s voice on the other end. “Richie?”  


“Yeah. That’s me, Richie, now _ you _ tell me who the _ fuck _ this is because it isn’t fucking funny.”  


For a moment, no one speaks, and Richie feels like he needs to sit down, regardless of the fact that he already is. He almost wants to cry.  


“I don’t know how to explain,” the voice answers, and Richie exhales roughly. It’s a new response, it’s not just his name being repeated back to him, and that’s something.  


“Try me. Money on your mother I’ve heard fucking weirder than whatever you’re gonna say.”  


There’s a quiet chuckle from the other side, and it sounds so much like Eddie it _ hurts _. He wants to set the phone on fire just as much as he wants to glue it to his hand and never hang up.  


“You’re still in California, right?”  


Richie feels it when his face drops whatever expression he’d been holding. It’s a terrifying question to be asked, and he’s aware he’s incredibly stupid for opting to even answer. “Yeah.”  


The man on the other end, who so very certainly cannot be Eddie, takes a deep breath. “Okay. Okay, I think it’ll be easier to just- give me a minute.”  


Richie opens his mouth, but the call is already over with by the time his brain catches up. Then he swears, looking around his room for anything that could conceivably be used for self defense. If he ever gets rich enough to afford it, he decides, he’s going to invest in a room that’s nothing but baseball bats; as anti-clown as he can make it.  


He’s still looking when his doorbell rings, and Richie is just shy of jumping so high he goes through his ceiling.  


Realistically, it’s probably some horribly inconvenient timing of some random missionary or something, but that doesn’t stop Richie from yanking his desk lamp from the wall and carrying it with him as he leaves the room.  


The doorbell is rung once more before Richie gets to the door, and for all of maybe six seconds, he falters. He knows what he _ heard _ on the phone, but the possibilities of what he could be about to _ see _ are seemingly endless. Could be a ghost; a zombie; a clown; a very lost pizza guy. They all have about equal chances of having the lamp bashed in on their head.  


His falter doesn’t turn into stagnation, though. Richie says _ fuck it _ to no one but himself and rips it off like a bandaid; adjusting his grip on the lamp, he uses his other hand to unlock the door and throw it open.  


Eddie.  


Not as a ghost, he thinks, not as a zombie. Just Eddie. Just standing there with his hands shoved anxiously into his jacket pockets. His hair looks longer, curling around the ears where it hadn’t before. And when the door opens, his face shifts from a more general anxiousness to genuine alarm. Then comes concern. A wary smile grows on his face.  


Richie thinks he passes out.  


Well, he doesn’t know what else would had to have happened, because the second his brain seems to hit the point of registration, he’s very suddenly on the ground. Everything is fuzzy like he just stopped spinning. His head hurts.  


It’s a rush of adrenaline and instant crash he hasn’t felt since he killed Bowers and, subsequently, immediately threw up.  


Truly, his life is nothing but a series of Greatest Hits.  


Eddie is kneeling over him pretty quickly, and Richie realizes he’s a little numb, because he can see the movement of Eddie’s hands before he can feel them firmly tapping against his cheeks. He looks completely petrified.  


“Richie? Look at me, buddy, say something. Blink if you can hear me. Move _ something _.”  


Richie, ever the pinnacle of grace, immediately goes to sit up again, and their heads knock together so hard he honestly thinks he might pass out again. They both groan, and after a moment, Richie is the first one to start laughing; half because he’s so inept it’s kind of hilarious, and half out of what might just be pure hysteria.  


It at least gets the _ this can't be real _ question out of the equation. Eddie is definitely real and solid, and Richie can already feel the headache coming on to prove it.  
  


Eddie stares at Richie from behind the hand he has on his own forehead, going from pure bewilderment to a small, amused smile of his own, which in turn turns itself into a quiet laugh as well. “You’re so fucking stupid,” he mumbles, which makes Richie just laugh harder.  


He pretends that if he doesn’t stop, then he doesn’t have to think about the thousands of burning questions and the ache that had started building again in his chest. It doesn’t last long either way. As they laugh, Eddie helps Richie into sitting up, and then pulls him further into a hug.  


And oh, the details might be fuzzy on the edges, but Richie could never forget the last time Eddie was in his arms like this. He could never forget that feeling of abject hopelessness no matter how hard he tried.  


He wraps his arms around Eddie in a way that he knows is too tight and yet not tight enough. His laughter slowly fades out, as does Eddie’s, and it’s Neibolt all over again. Richie has done a lot of loud, angry sobbing over the course of the past year, but all he can do now is clench his eyes shut and feel the tears come regardless. Eddie makes a noise that sounds like he’s about to launch into one of his long complaints (and Richie can hear it coming in his head, the “_ Richie, you stupid fuck, I can’t breathe. If you hug me any tighter, my ribs are going to break, you’re gonna have to drive me to a hospital, and that’s _ if _ I don’t kill you first” _), but it never comes.  


It takes another minute for Eddie to sniffle, and that’s when Richie realizes he’s crying too.  


They are an ugly mess there on the floor, crying onto each other and holding on as if the world is once again crumbling around them. But this time, Richie can feel the heat coming from Eddie’s skin; he’s hot, responsive, softly shaking with every breath he tries to take to compose himself.   


(If he’s still passed out, he doesn’t want to come to. He doesn’t want to feel Eddie torn from him again. He can’t.)

  
  


—

  
  


Richie knows he’s staring at Eddie like he’s about to explode. He doesn’t know how else to look at him, though.  


Once off the floor and once they weren’t crying so much, the two had gone into Richie’s kitchen. Richie is very definitely not hungry; he might not ever eat again. Eddie is _ not _ having those same problems, and so Richie had very quickly thrown together dinner for him; and now he’s watching him like he has a bomb strapped to his chest.  


“How long have you been... back?” he finally asks, voice impressively flat considering how hard he’s fighting not to rapid fire the rest of his questions and cry again.  


Eddie looks up at him as if it’s the first time he’s considered the question. “A few days. More than a few days, just— I don’t even know anymore. There’s some kid in a gas station somewhere in Maine who, shit, he’s not gonna get paid enough over the next _ year _ to compensate having to deal with me.”  


Richie snorts. Then he genuinely thinks about it, thinks about Eddie- bloody, very recently dead and even more recently not so, probably terrified out of his mind- and it’s no longer very funny.  


“Once I figured out everything, where I was, _ when _I was, I just spent fucking days having to convince people I hadn’t been dead.”  


“And thank you for that,” Richie comments, resting his chin on his hand and nodding.  


Eddie gives him a look, then keeps talking. “It took me a while to get all of that settled, at least. Banks, insurance, meds, job, _ wife _. I had a lot of weird explaining and it’s all still very overwhelming.”  


The conversation lulls for a moment, and Richie’s questions bubble up to the surface again. What finally comes out is not the most important nor the most pressing, but it’s the one that keeps tugging at his focus.  


“Have you talked to the others yet?”  


Eddie shakes his head.  


Richie’s chest is tight. “Why did you come to me first?”  


_ Why did you come back to me? _ is what he _ wants _to ask, but it opens him up to being far too vulnerable. He doesn’t want to verbally question this, lest he trigger some kind of Orpheus-and-Eurydice karma system that the universe has in place.  


For a moment, Eddie is quiet. He looks down at his hands, and Richie fights back the urge to hold them.  


“I don’t know; because you’re you.” Eddie looks back up at him and smiles again, and Richie would swear he looks shy. “I know this is- a lot. Don’t think I’m not still freaking out because _ I am _. But, I don’t know. I was freaking out, I just knew that I had to get out of Maine, out of New York, that whole fucking side of the country; and I guess I decided I needed someone who was gonna keep me from going crazy. I know you’re not gonna give me any bullshit.”  


Richie opens his mouth and then promptly closes it. Out of all their friends, of everyone who was vastly more qualified to deal with a man only recently undead, Eddie had come to him. And he wants to cry, go outside and scream, both out of total frustration and total euphoria.  


What he says is, “If you needed Bill’s address, you could’ve just started with that.”  


Eddie breaks off a piece of his sandwich and throws it at him, mumbles “shitbag,” under Richie’s snicker. But he’s smiling, and it’s enough.

  
  


\--

  
  


Richie has a lot of stupid questions, ones that Eddie couldn’t possibly have the answers to, but he always ends up asking anyway.  


“So, is it like “_ The Princess Bride” _, where you’re only kind-of sort-of dead? Were you almost-dead this whole time?”  


Eddie looks up at the ceiling and sighs. “No, Rich, I don’t think I was only _ vaguely _ dead on the logic of an eighties movie.”  


It had been just before sunset when Eddie had shown up at his door, and it was well into the night when they settled together in Richie’s living room, coffee and water cups scattered across the mini table in front of the couch.  


Most of it is they’re trying to figure out what the fuck happened to Eddie. A part of it is being afraid that if they go to sleep, Richie will wake up alone.  


“Well it would be less weird than being _ fully _ dead and being _ fully _ brought back, right?”  


“Would it be weirder to be fully dead or _ partly _ dead, Richie? _ Being fucking dead is weird_, period.”  


Richie jabs Eddie in his side with his foot and scribbles down “dead levels unknown”, because God knows if he doesn’t write this down then it’s going to get lost to time and a shitty, shitty memory.  
  


A thought occurs to him.  


“Wait, Eds, how the fuck did you get away from your wife long enough to get here? I definitely told her you were dead, there’s no way Nurse Ratched would just let you leave again.” Another thought pops into his head. “Does dying constitute a divorce?”  


Eddie is glaring at him.  
  


“I’ll shut up,” Richie nods and bites down on his pen.  


It’s a selfish thing to wonder about, and yet, Richie rationalizes, not entirely something to go ignored either. He’d like to know sooner rather than later if there’s a realistic chance of having Eddie taken away again, if they’re going to be separated by distance and by an ever-foggier memory.  


Eddie is far kinder to him than Richie could ever deserve; he pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs, annoyance as plainly evident as he always makes it, but he answers the question anyway.  


“Yeah, that’s done with. Even if the legally dead thing hadn’t completely dissolved all of that-- it did not take all that long to realize I did not want to spend the rest of my life with my mother.”  


It is a terrible thing to feel so excited. Richie takes the pen out of his mouth “And to think the Oedipus complex was that easy to solve!”  


Eddie shudders and he is _ yelling _ at Richie for that one, which makes Richie laugh so hard he slides almost completely off the couch. _ There’s no one to come in between this _.  


Richie stops laughing abruptly and sits back up, glasses going skewed in the process. “Wait, where the fuck have you been staying, then?”  


Still in the middle of berating Richie for being as disgusting as he is, Eddie has to come to an equally sudden stop, mouth hanging open until he processes the question, and then shuts it. The look that crosses his face isn’t quite embarrassment, but Richie doesn’t know what else to call it.  


“Motels. A few rental cars,” and Richie’s face must indicate all the thousands of responses he’s coming up with, as Eddie very quickly continues to cut him off. “I know, _ I know _ , Jesus. It’s fucking disgusting, but I didn’t have a choice! And you’re the _ last _ person I’m going to let lecture me on this shit, so you can shut the fuck up-”  


Richie throws his hands up in surrender and lays back down with a smile that feels like it stretches from ear to ear. “Alright, Eddie Eds, I haven’t said _ anything_.”  


Eddie glares down at him again, shaking his head and mumbling “don’t call me that, douchebag” before leaning back into the couch. Richie’s chest is alive with a levity he had almost forgotten could exist.  


He eventually rubs at his cheeks until it stops hurting to smile, because if he keeps looking at Eddie like _ that _ , things are going to get weird. Richie would like things to remain far from weird as long as he can manage it, circumstances considered. “Well I didn’t want to impose if you were staying somewhere _ nice _ by chance,” Richie sits back up again, joints complaining all the way. “The bedroom’s like, five steps that way. It’s not perfectly sterilized but I can like- wash the sheets or something?”  


Eddie doesn’t seem to recognize what Richie is offering for a moment, but the second he does, his face goes slack. “Dude, I’m not taking your bed.”  


“Yes you fucking are. _ You _ died on me, so-”  


“_ I _ died on _ you_? Are you saying that was my fault?”  


“For the sake of this argument, yes! And so you owe me, and that means either you’re taking my bed willingly, or I’m strapping you down to it.”  


Richie gives Eddie’s leg a firm pat before standing up, and Eddie looks so confused before he finally throws his hands up and follows after Richie, calling him a “fucking asshole” under his breath the whole time.  


That night, Eddie sleeps in Richie’s bed, and Richie takes the couch. He can’t exactly sleep.  


It feels like he spends hours combing through his memories about Derry, about the final fight. As if he could pinpoint a moment where he should’ve _ known _ Eddie had been alive, or had been _ capable _ of being alive again. But deep down he knows its a moment he’s never going to find, because he knows that Eddie died. Richie had been with him the whole time, and the one moment he wasn’t, he’d died.  


And yet he’s back. Richie puts his glasses back on and squints through the darkness, and he can see Eddie occasionally turn over in his sleep. Not dead, not a ghost, not some horrible Eddie-skin suit that a clown is about to jump from. It’s just Eddie, neurotic and electric and alive.  


_ Why did you come to me first?  
_

_ I don’t know; because you’re you.  
_

Richie smiles, and he prays to whoever could be listening that he doesn’t wake up alone.

  
  


\--

  
  


Sometimes, it turns out, the universe actually listens.  


When Richie wakes up, Eddie is a very tiny, fuzzy blur walking around his living room; once he fumbles with the blanket enough to find and pull out his glasses, he watches Eddie quietly wiping down his shelves and carefully sorting through the photos and knicknacks along the way. After a minute, he looks up and finally notices that Richie is awake, sitting up, and staring at him. He smiles, and Richie loses a tension in his shoulders he hadn’t been aware of until then.  


“You have the worst dust problem I think I’ve ever seen,” Eddie comments, carefully tossing the last of the wipes into a trashcan.  


Richie makes a noise of agreement, a little too tired to be on his A-game already. Eddie is still wearing most of the same clothes from yesterday- _ they need to go shopping _ \- and while he had noticed Eddie’s hair before, he’s really focused on it now. It curls up around his ears and at the back of his neck, and it’s fluffy in the way it always got when he didn’t comb it down, _ so _ soft looking.  


There’s a feeling of yearning in his chest that makes him realize just how deeply fucked he is; _ still _ is. All his months of grieving, of accepting he was out of chances, all undone like a child unspooling thread.  


“Hair’s cute,” Richie mumbles, and it’s not something he really meant to say out loud, but he sounds tired enough that he can maybe play it off as pure nonsense.  


Eddie, who had been cleaning the glasses off the coffee table, looks up at him with what might be genuine surprise. Then he makes a noise that’s half scoff, half genuine chuckle. “Yours looks like a racoon’s nest.”  


Richie raises his eyebrows. “Oh shit, you already found my pet? My domesticated racoon?”  


For a moment, Eddie’s smile drops. Then he realizes Richie is fucking with him, and he gives him a light smack on the head before he walks off again.  


Richie watches him go, a little more shameless than he would normally be. He’s completely fucked, he knows that, but he’s too happy to give a shit.

  
  


\--

  
  


Richie isn’t sure if you could call those initial first few days a honeymoon period; regardless, it’s weird for reality to settle back down onto them.  


He’s past the weirdness of Eddie being back pretty fast. That’s something he _ wants _ to accept, and so its easier for him to do so. What’s weirder is that Eddie is just- with him now.  


It’s not really weird, considering their closeness in the past, but- it’s still weird. To go from complete deprivation to total emergence is _ weird _. Having Eddie sleeping in his bed, riffing off his stupid, shitty jokes all feels like some too-perfect alternate universe that Richie has awkwardly been inserted into.  


This all had been made impossible the moment Eddie died, and Richie had almost been in the general vicinity of sort of accepting that. He’s hyper-aware that this is not a reality he should otherwise be living out. Shouldn’t have it, doesn’t deserve it, doesn’t know what to _ do _ with it.  


But even though the adjustment process is one hell of a hurdle to try and navigate, Richie thinks they both do alright. They don’t talk about Derry or Neibolt unless its by what always seems like an accident, and besides that, they’re just them. The kinetic energy continues to move through them without interruption; every single day, it flows through him and flows through Eddie.  


Richie still loves him.  


It makes the readjustment a little harder, but he manages. The pain of it only really burns at night, when it’s him and his couch and the guilt. But he manages.  


(He manages, at least, for as long as it takes for the guilt to grow legs and start to move itself into new corners. That realization that he _ doesn’t deserve this _ comes to him more and more, and it sinks in that he doesn’t.)  


“You really got the thousand-yard-stare down, don’t you?”  


Richie blinks out of his head. Eddie is looking at him, one eyebrow raised as if he’s preparing for the possibility of being concerned. It’s weird to look back at him, sprawled out on the couch where he had been in the middle of organizing his calendar, in deep contrast to Eddie, who is stopped halfway to the door, who is dressed for a _ real job _.  


He blinks one more time to affirm to himself that he’s paying attention, and then he answers. “Well of course. This is _ war _, Eddison, I’ve got to get into the mindset for it.”  


“Oh, that was funny. You should write that one down,” Eddie responds with a level of deadpan sarcasm that startles _ Richie _ into a laugh, and then continues on his way out, only barely making an effort to hide his own grin.  


Once Eddie is gone, Richie closes his laptop and lets it slide slowly into the cracks of the sofa.  


For what is certainly not the first time, his mind wanders back to Derry. He hasn’t asked Eddie much about it- both out of an attempt to not bring up trauma and because he really would rather not know- but the lack of knowing what happened leaves too much room to fill in the gaps on his own. Before Eddie came back, he’d already been having nightmares about both being trapped with him and about Eddie being trapped down there alone; alone, not quite dead, scared.   


He thinks about pulling Eddie from the house before it has a chance to collapse, and he’s _ alive _ against all odds. He heals as seamlessly as the scars on their hands had, and Richie isn’t a fucking coward, and he finally gets to kiss him--  


Richie stands up and shakes the thought out of his head, face hot as if anyone is there to judge him besides himself. _ Idiot _.

  
  


\--

  
  


“How much do you remember about being back in Derry?”  


They’re eating dinner together that same night, sitting elbow to elbow at the table. It’s shitty takeout- because Eddie is tired and they both hate cooking anyway- and Richie speaks because he’s tired of only focusing on how his glasses steam up every time he goes to take a bite.  


In the corner of his eye, he can see Eddie glance over at him for a brief moment before turning back again. “Most of it, I guess. All of the gang, the scavenger hunt, and I think- yeah, at least everybody in a ten mile radius trying to stab me.”  


Richie snorts before the seriousness of the thought twists up in his chest. Eddie’s cheek is a touch paler in the spot where he had been stabbed, but otherwise it’s the only indication he had ever been hurt. And Richie hasn’t quite had the balls to ask to see his chest yet.  


“You remember-?” Richie flounders for a moment, then holds up his hand and pretends to push his fork through it.  


Eddie blinks twice. “Classy.”  


“It seemed less blunt in my head!”  


“Of course it did, your head is a fucking horrorshow I could never dream of being inside of.”  


Richie makes two of them on that.  


Eddie shakes his head, but he’s smiling a little too. “Yeah. I remember that. But it's all- distant, I guess. I know it happened to me but it doesn’t _ feel _ like it happened to me.”  


Richie realizes he’s been going white-knuckled on his fork and quickly loosens up. He fucking _ wishes _ he could disconnect from that memory; it’s hard even in that moment to think of anything else but Eddie gasping his name and being ripped away from him.  


“Wish that would’ve gotten wiped,” Richie mumbles, consciously taking every breath in and out, regulated and not panicky.  


Eddie just shrugs, “It’s fucked up. Definitely fucked up. I remember it, but I don’t really think about it enough to truly freak out again, I guess.” He looks over at Richie with a smile, one that immediately drops, because Richie is terrible at keeping his face any type of neutral. “You _ really _ remember still, don’t you?” he asks, a little quieter.  


Richie’s eyebrows tick up slightly and he looks over. “Which part? You being gutted on top of me or you dying the second I wasn’t with you?”  


He grimaces at how harsh it comes out, as if he were mad at Eddie for it.   


“Sorry. Sorry.” Richie stands up and goes to throw his mostly empty container into the trash, his mouth going a mile a minute. “Genuinely, I’m glad that shit is all distant to you because it’s fucking- horrible to think about with a concept of clarity. And it doesn’t even matter anymore because you’re not _ dead _ anymore, but- I can’t unsee it, and even when shit started to fade again, _ that _ never did. And you’re alive now but you still _ died _ and you died because of _ me _ and that’s so many levels of fucked up I don’t know if I’ve even shaved an edge off of the fucking iceberg of even accepting that that happened-”  


“Richie.”  


As easy as that, the energy in Richie drops back down to what might be considered a normal level. He turns around to look at Eddie, who appears somehow so calm and concerned it makes Richie want to scream.  


“I didn’t die because of you, Richie.”  


And that is such bullshit that at first Richie can’t even find the words. And then “_ bullshit _” is, in fact, the first thing out of his mouth.  


It at least gets Eddie to push back a little, stop acting like he became the all-knowing omnipitent fucking eye of the universe. “What, you seriously think-”  


“Yes! And it’s not me being some self-deprecating piece of shit, that’s just what fucking happened!” Richie walks back over and pulls his chair out, moves it so he can sit in it and face Eddie fully. “I got caught in the lights, you got me out, and you got killed. Exact order of events. Not adding or taking any shit out. I got you killed, Eddie, and it’s fucking weird to try and deal with it when you’re suddenly not dead anymore.”  


In the back of his head, Richie is aware that this is possibly the most humiliating word vomit he’s ever dealt out. It’s probably been years since he’s been this serious without getting too uncomfortable with it and breaking the tension with a punchline. And this is Eddie; Richie can count on his hands the number of times they’ve held a normal, sane person’s definition of a conversation.  


But Richie can feel his brain sprinting faster and faster towards honest-to-God hysteria the more he thinks about Eddie and dying and this second chance he has that he could never hope to deserve.  


Eddie, for his part, looks like he can’t decide between punching Richie in the nose or not. It’s maybe silent for all of ten seconds, and it’s an eternity to Richie.  


“That’s still bullshit, dude,” Eddie finally breathes, and he’s actually fast enough to cut Richie off this time, “No, I mean it; shut the fuck up. Shut up.”  


Words pile at the back of his throat, but Richie shuts up.  


“Risk fucking analyst. I have spent my whole fucking _ life _ being afraid of shit, and my whole career was built on that for _ decades _ . And of fucking course when I saw you in those- those deadlights, that shit could’ve given me a stroke at any second. But I wasn’t gonna let you fucking die like that, either. If it was between _ me _ dying to save you or _ you _ dying because I was a coward, then I’m dying every time.”  


Eddie pulls himself closer until their knees bump. “You did not get me killed, you piece of shit, okay? We aren’t kids anymore- and even when we were, you weren’t responsible for all the stupid shit we got into, the shit _ I _got into.  


Richie stares at the ground so hard he’s half convinced holes are going to start burning through it. He doesn’t want to say anything because he knows he’s about six seconds away from crying- and he’s _ so tired _of crying- but, Jesus, he started this whole dialogue.  


While he’s trying to figure out how to respond to any part of that rebuttal, Eddie’s hand is suddenly cupping his cheek, tilting his head back up to force eye contact. Richie’s brain turns to pure white noise.  


“You’re so smart, it’s so weird how fucking stupid you are too,” Eddie smiles from ear to ear. Richie feels like he’s processing everything at half speed, and the smile _ he _ manages feels breathless.  


(He’s played out hundreds of situations with Eddie’s hands on his face like this, but to recall them now would feel like too much. Eddie would be able to see it, somehow.)  


A look that is too quick for Richie to pin down crosses over Eddie’s face, and Richie can finally focus enough to feel the heat coming off of his hand. Quietly, Eddie pulls his own chair even closer, pulls Richie into him for a hug. Scissors cut through the wire. His shoulders droop, and he wraps his arms around Eddie’s chest while his face burns with embarrassment.  


He feels so fucking stupid.  


Eddie whispers, “Come on, dumbass, don’t get me thinking you actually care about me.”  


“I’ll bodyslam us both through this table, I swear to God.”  


And that gets Eddie laughing, and Richie can finally get the noise in his head down to a reasonable enough level, enough to where he can laugh a little back and push at Eddie’s side when he pulls back.   


For a moment, Eddie keeps his hand on Richie’s arm, almost cautious. “Okay, man? I don’t blame you for any of it.”  


Richie nods dismissively, and Eddie doesn’t let go.  


“Okay?”  


“Yeah, we can wait to settle blame during the divorce.”  


He smiles. Eddie finally lets him go with a gentle pat, touching him once more to ruffle his hair when he walks past him. Richie thinks he does a good job of pretending to be offended.  


He burns through the night.

  
  


—

  
  


Richie finally sees Eddie’s chest.  


They’re both moving around the apartment in their own, contained little chaos. They have dinner with Beverley and Ben in an hour, and Eddie is running around trying to change from work while Richie is mostly just badgering him for not having everything perfectly ready for, what, one time in his life?  
  


(Technically, Eddie is a surprise. Because they had to decide how the fuck they were going to break the Not Dead news to the rest of their friends, and Richie had vetoed the freaky waiting on their doorsteps method he’d had done to him. He vetoes the idea of Eddie just calling them, too.  


“What, because just getting out of a car without any warning is any less surprising?”  


“No, because if somebody has a stroke, we can at least drive them to a fucking hospital.”)  


Richie really isn’t even paying attention, texting the address to Bev and using one hand to try and finish up the buttons on his shirt. The shirt’s got a bunch of giant, slightly rotated flamingos and ferns on it, which Eddie had said was perhaps the ugliest thing he’s ever seen him wear, so he’s doing good.  


Eddie, presently, is still shouting something at him through the bathroom door, completely unintelligible the whole time. Richie drops his car keys into his pocket and shouts “can’t hear you!”, finally getting the final button on his shirt fastened.  


The door swings open, with Richie somehow standing just far enough away that he doesn’t get completely knocked out by it, and Eddie presses his arm against the door frame with a sharp exhale.  


“I said we’re going to be late if you don’t shut the fuck up. So shut the fuck up, Richie, for five fucking minutes.”  
  


He grabs the door again and starts to close it, and Richie catches it halfway to keep it open.  


There’s a lot that Richie’s brain has to focus on at once.   


There’s the tattoos, which are almost haphazardly scattered across his chest and upper arms, places that Richie would have to strain to remember if he’s seen since Derry, if he even saw them _ in _ Derry. There’s the pale mark on his chest, just like on his cheek, as if the injuries he’d died with were more of a ghost than Eddie himself. There’s the fact that, while not jacked to the point where he could like, deadlift someone like Richie, he is undeniably _ ripped _.  


That last one is probably the least important of them all, but it’s the one that completely breaks Richie for a moment.  


All of that has to happen in his head within the span of maybe five seconds. And meanwhile, Eddie is staring at him with what is at first annoyance, which then slowly fades into what might be embarrassment. “What?”  


Richie opens and closes his mouth several times, slowly starting to smile giddly as he does. “Explain,” he says, gesturing to Eddie’s chest with one hand. “I’m trying to process. Please explain what I’m looking at.”  


Eddie looks down at himself like that’s something you forget, and he looks back up _ blushing_. “I- like _ many _ other kids leaving home for the first time-”  


“Holy shit, you were a college rebel,” Richie’s smile is ear to ear. This is new material.  
  


“Yeah, okay, laugh it up, fuckface.”  


“Dude, I can’t even call you Spaghetti anymore.” he pauses a moment, “I can’t think of a muscular replacement pasta. Rigatoni? Eddie Penni?”  


Eddie closes his eyes in what might be an effort to appear annoyed, but Richie can see the corners of his mouth twitching ever slightly upwards. “Alright, man, fuck off, we’re gonna be late. Stop staring.”  


Richie pouts dramatically, looking over Eddie with enough exaggeration that any actual _ looking _ he’s doing is going to fly right under the radar. “Oh, but Eds, baby, I look at your tits and I see _ stars _ ! Stars, Eddie! Are you _ kidding _ me!”  


That’s what makes Eddie finally come after him, and Richie bolts down the hallway with a cackle of laughter that echoes throughout the place. Eddie chases him to the edge of the living room, wherein he stops to flip him off and turn around to continue getting ready.  
  


Richie stands there laughing to himself, as the giddiness slowly fades out and he’s left with a full-body warmth he can’t shake. He supposed he _ has _ grown a little bit since Derry; he doesn’t feel inherently dirty anymore. It’s a feeling almost as nice as the image of Eddie, but he can’t even begin to think about that _ now _, otherwise his brain is going to be focused on all the wrong things going into the “hey guys, Eddie’s alive!” conversation due to happen soon.  


For once in his life, being horny is going to have to be a second priority.  


When Eddie comes out- perfectly normal white button-up on, and, now that Richie knows to look for them, perfectly hiding every tattoo- Richie smiles at him in a way that gets him one of those _ what now? _ looks.  


“Are you gonna be an adult for once?”  


“I have not been an adult in forty-one years, Edd-osaurus, and I sure as fuck won’t start today.”  


He gets his jacket thrown at the back of his head for that.

  
  


\--

  
  


The dinner goes well. They all look a little weird, crying in the middle of the parking lot, but everyone is so happy and for a few hours, they’re normal friends.

  
  


\--

  
  


More time passes. Richie’s nightmares pick back up on their irregular basis.  


Like most times, the basic structure is all there. He’s somewhere in the caves, trying to fight off the arms that are dragging him farther and farther from Eddie. In this incarnation, Eddie is still alive. He’s screaming for him with an anguish only really possible in a dreamscape. Richie is screaming too, and in the dream it takes _ years _ to pull him out of that cave, hands raw and bloody from his efforts to grip the walls.  


Eddie is alive, and Richie can’t fight hard enough to get back to him.  


Richie wakes up gasping for air, his chest hollow and head throbbing. It takes too long to remember where and _ when _ he is.  


He isn’t sure if he was being particularly loud or not- because some, but not all, of his nightmares have gotten him some noise complaints- at least until Eddie comes running out from the bedroom. Richie quickly picks up his glasses and sits up a little straighter, still reeling from the dream and straining to process anything else.  


Eddie has a sneaker in one hand, and he’s looking at him like _ he’s _ the asshole. “What the fuck was that?”  


“Oh my God,” Richie slumps back against the couch and puts his hand over his eyes. “You were gonna beat a murderer off me with your shoe. Actually your shoe.”  


“_ Your _ shoe, shithead, it’s your room.”  


Richie lets his arm drop to his side, knuckles hitting the carpet with a quiet thud. “Jesus Christ,” he mumbles, somewhat to Eddie but mostly to himself. He’s too tired, too scattered to really say anything else. Anything else would require thought, like it doesn’t feel like his brain is curled up in the corner, dry heaving.  


He can hear Eddie set his shoe back down, before he walks over and is then standing over Richie with his face scrunched up in concern. He isn’t wearing a shirt again. It’s still a nice image, except Richie is in every kind of wrong headspace and his eye only seems to know the place where Eddie had been stabbed.  


“You okay?” Eddie’s voice is so soft, so genuinely _ soaked _ with concern, Richie starts to feel bad for waking him up.  


Richie closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before opening them; seeing Eddie standing over him still makes him a little itchy, especially in the almost-dark. “Well, you aren’t dead again, so I think I’m pretty alright.”  


He doesn’t know how he does it, but somehow Eddie’s big sad eyes get _ bigger _, and Richie is kind of impressed at how much worse he instantly feels because of it. Neither of them say anything for what feels like a long time, like they’re both feeling out where to put the next step down.  


“You need your bed back,” Eddie seems to decide right then and there, shaking his head and rubbing at his eyes. “Come on.”  


Richie blinks. “You’re not sleeping on the couch, dude.”  


“Of course I’m not, come on.”  


It feels like it takes years for Richie’s brain to connect the dots. His face goes completely blank once it does.  


(And somehow Eddie comes in to save his ass again, because Richie absolutely cannot think of any reason why they shouldn’t both crawl into bed together, as Platonic Best Friends, outside of literally being in love with him.)  


“Rich, it’s fucking late, we’re both tired, and we’re both small enough to fit. I’m not about to beg.”  


Richie is either really desperate or just _ that _ tired, and either way it’s not the right state of mind to agree to something like that. But he does, he nods, and he even takes Eddie’s hand that has been offered to him. It’s warm, and in the haze of interrupted sleep, Richie could swear the touch lingers even once he’s on his feet.  


They’re impressively serious about it. Eddie lays down a pillow on the middle of the bed- “because I don’t trust that you ever learned how to sleep without drooling”-before crawling right back onto his side. Richie melts pretty much the second he touches the mattress, most of it cold but a small part warm from where Eddie had been.  


He’s gone to the world fast, because he doesn’t even get to think about the true logistics of this setup before it’s suddenly bright and hot.  


Richie can feel where his glasses have been pressing into his face all night. He pushes them off with a heavy exhale, vaguely aware of his other arm outstretched and warm in the sun beating in through the window. It takes a few minutes to realize his arm is on top of something, equally warm, and breathing.  


Richie opens his eyes, and even though he can’t see for shit, he can make out enough of Eddie, laying there only a few inches away. He quickly scrambles to get his glasses back on, while at the same time otherwise trying to remain deathly still in fear of waking the man up. Eddie’s face is half smushed into their boundary pillow, hair sticking up in random patches. And he looks so small it feels like breathing would shatter both him and the moment.  


Richie looks down at his arm. It’s draped across Eddie’s side, hand half coming to rest on his back. Richie has imagined this too, countless times, pulling him in and slowly kissing him awake. Eddie kissing him awake. To have even a hand on him feels like the universe is giving him an invitation.  


But-- from the universe, not from Eddie.  


Carefully, Richie withdraws his arm. Eddie finally stirs a little at the sudden lack of warmth, but he isn’t awake. So Richie sits there for a moment, staring for longer than would be considered in the realm of not-creepy, before finally forcing movement into his legs and leaving the bed for a shower.  
  


When he comes back, the bed is empty. He has two Eggos waiting for him in the kitchen and a post-it that reads “you still snore”. It’s almost domestic.

  
  


—

  
  


For some reason the arrangement sticks.  
  


Eddie treats it like it’s no big deal, and at this point Richie is resigned to following his lead as to how a normal person should be reacting to this situation. Normal people definitely share beds. Normal people can absolutely do it platonically. Richie is the weird one for feeling like he’s laying down on a fucking live wire every night.  


The worst thing is that it truly helps. If another nightmare starts up, one of two things will now happen. The first is a half-conscious Eddie will reach over and hit him with one of the pillows, which wakes Richie up fast and puts an end to it. Or Richie will wake up on his own, feeling like he’s drowning, and reach over for Eddie in the dark. And Eddie is always there; if he’s weirded out to waking up with Richie’s hand around his wrist, he doesn’t verbalize it. It never becomes a joke.  


In Richie’s head, he’s made his move 700 different times by now. He’s kissed him in Neibolt, on his porch when he came back, that first night on the couch, and almost every other day since. In his head he’s kissed Eddie _ years _ before getting into a bed with him.  


Meanwhile, outside of Richie’s head, he continues to be a man of all talk (or thought) and no action. He can’t even think of the right way to drop the _ by the way, gay _ information, because he’s fucking forty and something like that should’ve definitely been talked about before. Before the bed.  


He brews over this while he writes; because he’s turned Eddie into his test dummy for what’s funny and what is garbage. He could do gay jokes. He’s had about a thousand floating around his head for any given number of years. But he’s not sure wordlessly leaving a script outline with that content on Eddie’s side of the bed is the way he wants to come out to him, as it were.  


It’d be hilarious, but he only gets one shot at doing this, so he opts to keep that version of events hypothetical.  


He’s not avoiding the subject. He just needs the right time to do it.   


But Richie swears he sits on that couch all day, and it’s like trying to write around a brick wall. He’s going to be broke within a month if he keeps getting stuck to assumed-heterosexual dick jokes. And he must have the thousand-yard look on his face again because Eddie doesn’t bug him when he comes home, just goes into the kitchen and takes some calls.  


(Richie gets a little distracted by that, because Eddie’s dealing-with-strangers voice is so _ cute_.)  


Eventually, when it’s gone quiet for more than a few minutes, Richie stands himself up. He’s slowly learning that if he doesn’t just rip the bandaid off with things, he’s just going to keep agonizing over them internally for the rest of his life, and he really doesn’t think he’s going to have a long enough life to validate that. The anxious weight in his stomach is still there, but, fuck it. Fuck it and pretend it isn’t there, he tells himself.  
  


It’s maybe ten seconds from couch to kitchen table, and it still feels like Richie just blips into existence in front of Eddie, no time for forethought or what the fuck his plan even is.  


“Hey, uh,” Richie’s voice is startlingly shaky and he involuntarily winces at the sound of it, clearing his throat and rushing to continue. “You’d be good to read over some material tonight?”  


Eddie looks up at him and nods, completely unphased. “Sure, we can do it after dinner and spitball off each other.”  


He looks back down to his laptop, and then Richie just keeps _ standing _ there, and he watches Eddie’s eyes slowly tick back up to him. Richie’s brain is pure white noise; even if he had planned a great, lengthy monologue, there’s no way he would be able to remember it here in the moment.  


“I just- I wanted to uh, preface it. Talk to you first.”  


Eddie doesn’t say anything, but for once Richie might think he prefers silence. The metaphorical hand is on the metaphorical bandaid, all Richie has to do is rip it off. Just rip it off.  


Richie shoves his hands into his pockets because he can feel them start shaking.  


When he can finally say “I’m gay”, it’s not so much a statement as it is somehow a question. His voice goes high and shaky again and he’s gripping the inside of his pockets like handlebars. Less “I’m gay”, closer to “I’m… gay?”  


No matter how he says it, he at least fucking _ says it_.   


A look comes over Eddie’s face that Richie can’t think to describe; it’s the same look he’d had when they’d semi-argued about Richie being to blame for Eddie’s death, after putting his hand on Richie’s cheek but before hugging him. Besides the shift in expression though, Eddie remains as still as he possibly could be.  


Finally, he nods. “Okay.”  


It’s such an underreaction compared to what Richie had been playing out in his head that it somehow manages to jump-start his stream of consciousness again. “ ‘Okay’?”  


Eddie blinks once. “What reaction are you looking for.”  


Richie’s mouth opens and closes. What reaction _ had _ he been expecting? He realizes he has no clue, but he’s still kind of dumbfounded by the complete lack of any strong outward emotion to either side. “You don’t even seem _ surprised _.”  


“I mean-” He seems to be going toward a thought, but then stops and shakes his head.  


Richie stares at him. “If you say anything in the remote vicinity of you already knew, I will not be held legally responsible for how I respond.”  


“Of course I didn’t fucking know, you _just_ _told me_.” Eddie closes his laptop and braces his elbows on top of it, hands gesturing vaguely at nothing. When he continues on, his tone is perfectly measured. “I didn’t _know_, I _couldn’t_ have known, it’s just- I’m not blindsided either. You’re still you and all the fucking- stupidity that entails, just a few things make sense in retrospect.”  


The two of them stare at each other for what feels like an hour and each stunned for what seem like completely different reasons. Richie’s brain very quickly decides, yeah, it’s had enough, and he ends up collapsing into a chair on the other side of the table from Eddie. He feels like he just ran a fucking marathon, which is embarrassing, but- its done.  


Eddie looks him over, because he must look as tired as he feels, and cracks a smile. “You feel better?”  


It sounds a little sarcastic, but he knows that Eddie means it. Richie rests his head against his palm and takes a deep breath. “Somewhere in that ballpark.”  


“Jesus, Rich, what did you think I was going to say? I’m not Bowers.”  


Richie’s hand hides his involuntary wince at the mention. “No. Lot of bad haircuts, none of them _ that _ bad.” He looks up at Eddie, whose smile is a little more sad now. They both have way too much trauma tied to one fucking guy, even jokes can’t soften that.  


“I don’t know,” Richie continues, letting his hand fall to the table and softly drumming his fingers against its surface. “Fucking forty years of not talking about it at all, I was gonna go crazy if I didn’t just fucking _ say it _ . I want to joke about it instead of just feeling stupid and bad about it, I want to make it _ normal _ for me.”  


Eddie nods along, and Richie can feel the questions lingering in the space between them, but none of them are ever spoken. Richie wonders if Eddie is going back through their every moment together, trying to re-contextualize it, the way Richie himself had started doing, during his great coming-to-terms-with-himself process after Derry. The conversation goes back into a lull, but it’s significantly less tense than it had been before.  


“I’m gay too,” Eddie blurts out, and a hand immediately goes up to partway cover his mouth.  
  


Richie’s eyebrows shoot up; and his brain does whatever the mental equivalent of slamming on your brakes is, 80 to 0 in half a second. And his face had been pretty warm with embarrassment before, but Eddie goes straight to red _ right _ away. “I think,” he adds, quieter, and somehow he manages to hold eye contact with Richie the whole time.  


“Edward Kaspbrak,” Richie starts to grin, and it’s like the last of his anxiety finally floats off. Absolute elation is an easy feeling to latch onto, more so than the simultaneous anxiety, “are you trying to step on my moment?”  


“Fuck you, dude,” Eddie puts his head in his hands, and Richie can tell he’s trying not to laugh. “Fuck you.”  


Richie takes a deep breath, finally starting to try and shake off the tense awkwardness of the room. His heart is doing awful, awful things in his chest, and he’s not dumb to part of the reason why, and he kicks the thought to the back of his head to deal with later. “I mean- okay. Like you said, okay.”  


After a moment, Eddie drops his hands onto the table and looks up at Richie. In a world where Richie is not a certified coward, he could kiss him. He _ wants _ to so badly. But he stays in his chair, and he keeps smiling at him until Eddie starts to smile back.  


“Okay,” Eddie repeats, seemingly trying to gauge just how serious Richie is being. When he realizes there’s no delayed punchline, he relaxes further.  


_ Okay _ , Richie tells himself, cheeks starting to hurt, _ okay _.

\--

  
  


A week after coming out to Eddie, Richie finally submits a rough outline of a script to his agent. He and Eddie drink to celebrate.  
  


They break out the red wine after dinner, Eddie has a shitty little congratulations card on the table (it reads “Enjoy You’re Birthday”, in weird, blocky font, and scribbled on the inside is “you’re still not funny” in Eddie’s handwriting. Richie cries laughing for five minutes, at that point stone cold sober), and they spend two hours just drinking and bullshitting until their walking becomes very definitely affected.  


Richie, who has never once been known for having any form of restraint in his most unaltered state, is having the best time and the worst time of his life at the same time. He’s _ happy _ , undeniably, he loves having this and there isn’t ever a moment where he doesn’t. But this far into the bottle, he’s very purposely on his best behavior. He doesn’t want to fuck up and go too far; he doesn’t want that normally, he _ especially _ doesn’t want it so soon on the heels of the gay-bomb, when it’s going to come off like Richie clinging to him on the basis of that alone.  


(And that would be typical of the universe to do to him, wouldn’t it? Have Richie make a move, and have it come off as “we’re both gay and drunk why not?” and not “I’ve literally been in love with you since we were kids”.)  


“When did you know you were gay?” Still, Richie has no filter, and one of the questions that had been drifting in his head for the past week finally shoots out before he can stop it.  


Eddie looks at Richie quizzically, but he at least leaves him with the dignity of not completely shooting him down. The way they’re sitting on the couch, their legs are almost intricately tangled together; Eddie tries to sit up a little, and it just ends up with both of them kicking the other in the thighs and trying not to laugh.  


“When did I know, or when did I _ know _?” Eddie sighs and slides back down into the couch, and Richie bats away his foot before it gets too close to his face. “I mean- fuck. Probably fuckin’ ages before I actually really knew.”  


Richie nods along, head heavy and floppy. He can add this to the list of things that clown irreparably fucked up for everybody, specifically for them.  


Eddie continues on, rambly and a little slurred at the edges. “Like, clown-elephant in the room aside, I was never gonna fucking accept it as a kid. Not with the politics. Not with my mom. Not with Derry.  


“I don’t know what the fuck it is about Derry, but, when we came back, it almost clicked, I think. I think for the first time in my fucking life, I nearly got it. And then-” Eddie makes a noise and waves his hand around his chest. “-then it all went to shit. Then I got back, and I don’t know what changed in my brain, but whatever block was there before is gone now. I got back, and somewhere- when I was dealing with everything else, I just knew, and it was okay.”  


“Yeah.” Richie nods, almost to himself. “I think I was so far in denial I might have actually looped back into acceptance.” Eddie snorts, then bites his lip and nods for Richie to keep going. “I don’t think I ever didn’t know, I just thought that- if I pretended I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be.”  


His breathing is a little heavy, but Richie has thought back on this so much and with such scrutiny that the anxiety never really reaches his head. He’s not in that place anymore.  


“Going back to Derry: made it better or worse?” Eddie takes a small sip from his glass, dainty as fuck for no reason, before leaning back into the arm of the couch.  


Richie laughs. “Oh, worse. So much fucking worse. Holy shit, my self loathing _ actually _ manifested and tried to kill me. And then it-“  


He falters. His brain, sober, is already a location of constant helter skelter; drunk is so much worse. Drunk Richie goes from laughing about the trauma to being genuinely fucked up about it again within seconds. He shuts his eyes and tries to block out the returning images, throat drying up.  


“Are you gonna cry?” Eddie asks, and it takes some time for Richie to realize he’s genuinely asking and not mocking him.  


Richie shakes his head. “Nope. ‘m okay.” He takes a deep breath and looks pointedly everywhere but Eddie. He continues: “Then it killed you, and… I was not okay. For a long time. But that was probably the first moment I realized I had to fucking change something up, because I couldn’t just go through all that fuck and then come back to the same bullshit.”  


“Almost everyone went back to the same bullshit, Rich, even I did, it was just- figuring out what, if we wanted to change shit.”  


Richie looks at Eddie for the briefest of moments before turning away again, head shaking. “No. Everyone turned their shit around. Bev and Ben left together like it was a fucking race, Bill and Mike both got the hell out of Dodge too and fixed up their shit, because nobody had to deal with any more dead people on their conscious. Everyone got to leave Derry with this great new life ahead of them, and-”  


He gestures aimlessly around them both. “-and nothing changed for me. Except I got really fucking depressed. Which feels like winning the fucking lottery.”  


Eddie has that look on his face again, and Richie wants to shake him until it goes away, because it sends his heart right into his throat and keeps it there. “Come on, bullshit, dude,” he’s a little quieter, shorthand to indicate he’s not looking to argue; not really. “You changed. I’m with you every fucking day, you’re not any worse than I remember you being.”  


“Yeah, ‘cause you’re here,” Richie’s impulsivity knocks another one out before he can think through the implications of what it means. “I spent a year thinking that any chance I had of being anything better had died on fucking Neibolt Street. And I hated Bill and Mike and Ben for dragging me out of that place because it was like- what was the point of beating that thing, if we left you? What was _ my _ point in making it if you didn’t?”   


Richie is speaking in so many different levels of metaphor and double meanings he feels like a fucking English teacher. And his face is hot in a way that he knows it isn’t the drinking, and he wishes there was a way he could just crawl off to bed without wanting to die of embarrassment.   


“My head was there too,” Eddie mumbles, “With the deadlights. I remember thinking, like- there was no way you were going to die, and especially because of me fucking freezing up again.” He goes quiet for a moment, thinking, and Richie just watches him. Then he starts to smile, face going red. “I remember before you woke up- I thought I was gonna have to try and kiss you.”  


It feels like Richie’s ribs constrict to the point of breaking. In the moment that had been between waking up and having Eddie ripped away, a part of Richie had almost thought he _ had _. “No shit?” he laughs.  


Eddie nods and sinks further into the couch, while Richie sits up, smiling to mask the complete, total chaos his thoughts are in. “It worked for Ben when we were kids! Fuck you, I was panicking, man. And if it had worked, you would _ never _ have made fun of me for it, you asshole.”  


“No, I wouldn’t have,” Richie rests his arms on his legs, and he’s a little unprepared for how serious he comes off. It hurts a little, how serious he is and how much Eddie is laughing, but he manages to keep that off of his face. “You save my fucking life, you’re entitled to first fucking base, Eds.”  


They both break into giggles, and that’s the note that their conversation tappers out on; Richie leaves to pee, and by the time he comes back, Eddie is _ out_. It’s almost unconscious, second nature for Richie to grab a blanket for him, turn down the lights, adjust the thermostat to be just a little colder, because Eddie refuses to adjust to the California weather. Richie realizes he’s a better host drunk than he is lucid and sober.  


Finally in bed, on top of the covers, Richie sinks into his head. He doesn’t know how it’s possible to feel like a coward and an invasive creep all at the same time. Yearning like this doesn’t feel healthy; Richie wonders if it’s possible to die from so many missed chances. He imagines walking back into his living room and shaking Eddie awake, demanding to know why he had thought about kissing him.  
  


Did Eddie just assume their definitely-platonic friendship would be enough to shake him from the deadlights? He had to know Ben loved Beverley, even back then. Did Eddie think a general love would still do the trick? Or was Eddie-  


The end of that question is too much of a dark pit for Richie to get any closer. He takes his glasses off and haphazardly tosses them onto the floor, eyes shut tight while he tries to reel back from the possibility. Entertaining it only makes things worse.  


Richie rolls over and screams a good, healthy _ “fuck” _ into the pillows, pillows that really don’t muffle him as well as he would’ve hoped. He stays there for a second, waiting to see if he’s accidentally woken Eddie and is about to have the man running in. When nothing happens, Richie still doesn’t move, and he eventually falls asleep like that.  


He doesn’t dream, but he still wakes up feeling emotionally shaken. Eddie isn’t next to him, and realizing how necessary that physical presence is to him feels like a punch in the gut.  


Richie loves Eddie, and Eddie does not love him back, and that’s fine. He’s burned for thirty years over it, he’s capable of surviving for longer, until the flame finally dies out.

  
  


\--

  
  


Christmas comes.  


Neither Richie nor Eddie talk all that much about it, in the days leading up to it. Give him another year, Richie might’ve gone overboard with decorations just to be annoying to Eddie (because Richie on his own doesn’t celebrate that shit). But for once it feels more natural to keep it lowkey. He sets up a little plastic tree on the coffee table, hangs a joke piece of mistletoe over the doorway to the bedroom, and that’s really all they need.  


On Christmas morning, Richie wakes Eddie up by way of blaring some trashy remix of _ Jingle Bell Rock _ from his speaker, which probably earns him another noise complaint by the time Eddie finally emerges from the bedroom with a look of absolute murder in his eyes. But Eddie doesn’t usually get his bite going until a few hours after waking up, so Richie gets to live to see breakfast.  


It’s the first time in ages Richie hasn’t been alone during this time of year, but he supposes that’s been the case for the past month anyway. Spend a year alone, have a month wherein your friend comes back to life and moves in with you. Such is the weird fucking universe.  


And now he can’t imagine what being alone would be like, not after thirty years of separation nor after the year of trying to grieve.  


Richie swirls his coffee around in the mug, giving a good, firm kick to the _ death _ memories trying to resurface. _ Enough already.  
_

Still, somehow Eddie picks up on it. Because he can see through Richie like he’s made of nothing but thin air. “Gonna come back down to earth, man?”  


Richie looks up at him. It feels like every time he does, things feel a little more solid. Eddie’s hair is still curling up at the ends- even more now, when he hasn’t spent half an hour combing it down- and he actually seems _ healthy _. In some ways it still feels like an awful dream he’s going to wake up from at any moment, but he hasn’t yet. And as long as he never does, he’s okay.  


“I have yet to _ leave _ earth, Edward,” Richie takes a slow drink. “But when I do, you’ll be the first to know.”  


“If someone finally jettisons you into space, I’m already gonna have front row seats to it.”  


“Merry Christmas to you too, shithead.”  


Eddie grins and Richie kicks him under the table, as if he isn’t actively trying to smile as well.  


“Really though. Are you going to do anything today? California friends?”  


Richie’s eyebrows go up in the slightest. “I think you’ve been living here long enough to realize that I’m a shut-in. Unless _ you _ have California friends, it’s us and the shitty tree and not a damn thing else.”  


Some part of him expects Eddie to actually have something to do for the day, and that might have to be Richie’s cue to follow suit. But Eddie just rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “ ‘Unless I have California friends’, yeah, Rich, like I’d be doing anything without you.”  


It’s a statement that has the room to be bitter, but instead it’s completely void of that. Richie feels that warm fondness settle in his chest. It comes with a certain ache as well, but he’s so used to it at this point, it barely even registers.  


Before the conversation can start back up again, Richie sets his mug down and quietly leaves to the bedroom. He hadn’t actually bought Eddie anything- for a lot of reasons; because he doesn’t want to come off too strong, because he’s still figuring out how much Eddie’s _ changed _, because he’s a lazy bastard who’s afraid of getting it wrong- but he’s kept that stupid, awful suitcase up in his closet all this time. Pushed to the back, covered in dust, but completely untouched.  


Richie figures it’s something. Eddie hadn’t come with much from New York, so he figures that giving him back things from before is a nice gesture. He’s needed an excuse to give it back anyway.  


When he comes back out with it, Eddie just looks confused. Richie hesitates to say anything, just quietly hoisting it up onto the table and pushing it closer to him. Eddie takes it cautiously; then his face clears when he reads his own name on the tape.  


“It got left in my car by accident, after Derry,” Richie says, pretending he’s completely confident in saying it was accidental. “And then I forgot about it and all _ this _ shit happened and- really, I just hope it’s not all underwear and meds in there.”  


When Eddie looks at him again, he’s got that sickeningly fond look back to him, and Richie feels his face go hot. “You never looked in here?” he asks, almost disbelieving, while he unclasps it.  


Richie shakes his head, leaning down and resting his arms against the table. “It felt like I would’ve been desecrating a grave, if I’m completely honest.”  


Eddie pops the suitcase open, and he looks so genuinely content Richie quickly decides he doesn’t give a shit what’s in it. From the look of it though, it’s mostly clothes. Eddie sorts through them, and that’s when Richie realizes how _ small _ everything is.  


“Dude, this is all from high school,” Eddie laughs a little, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. “Mike’s call freaked me out so bad I grabbed a suitcase I packed back in high school. Holy shit.”  


Richie’s eyes widen a little and he quickly walks over to stand behind Eddie. “What the fuck were you still doing with it?”  


Eddie shrugs, pulling out horribly-aged inhalers that had been scattered inside. “I have no fucking idea. I remember like- I had emergency bags-”  


“Emergency bags.” Richie repeats, deadpan.  


“Yes, asshole, because my mom was nuts, right?” Richie holds his hands up in surrender, and Eddie shoves him in the ribs before continuing. “They were in case any serious shit went down: long hospital stays, if I had to leave for a few days, probably in case of the clown too. Fuck me if I know why I held onto this one or why I never unpacked it, though.”  


The next thing Eddie pulls from the suitcase are photos. Some are polaroids, some from photobooths. Both men drop the playful antagonism pretty fast from there; Eddie holds onto them like they’re made of glass, and he moves as slow as a human could probably go to flip through them.  


One of them is Richie and Eddie in the hammock, several years too old and too lanky to come even close to properly fitting, as if they ever had as younger teens. Richie is the one holding the camera, face half out of focus, and he _ looks _ so annoying that present-Richie feels a giggle rise up in his chest. And Eddie is there, looking at him with that same unplaceable thing; like when he’d held his face, when he’d been about to offer to share the bed with him, like every moment Richie _ should’ve _ kissed him in. It’s weird to see it present there as kids, and Richie wonders if he ever noticed it then.  


Richie is glad he never opened the suitcase before now. Looking at these photos in the midst of a grieving process would’ve _ broken _ him.  


“You can keep these,” Eddie says, startling Richie out of his head, turning to look back at him over his shoulder, “Gift inside a gift.”  


Richie stares at him for a moment. “Oh these are going in my wallet. I’m going to whip these out at parties like baby photos.”  


Even joking, the sentiment weighs on Richie’s shoulders like bricks. When Eddie hands the photos back to him, Richie handles them with just as much caution as Eddie had, perhaps even more. He ignores the briefest second where their fingers brush against each other.  


Most of the photos go immediately into a Ziploc baggie, which in turn gets placed on the desk next to their bed. And Richie takes the photo of them on the hammock and legitimately slides it into the back of his wallet. Something about knowing that gets to stay with him makes Richie’s heart tighten, and it’s the best feeling he could imagine.  


He turns around to go back to Eddie, only for Eddie to be standing in the doorway, smiling once Richie can see him. Richie smiles back and walks over to him, and they just stand there in silence for a moment, together in the doorway. It’s mostly agonizing, how often they toe the line of intimacy, but Richie makes an effort to take it in stride.  


“Thanks, for holding onto that stuff.” Eddie looks down at the space between them.  


Richie rests his back against the door frame and tilts his head, trying to get a better look at Eddie’s face. “Well it’d have been kind of a shithead move to just throw it out.”  


Eddie looks up to throw a glare at him. “You know what I mean.”  


He does. “I know. Still. Least I could’ve done.”  


Richie, at this point, is convinced he’s started imagining it, but he swears that look flashes across Eddie’s face again. But like every time before, it’s gone before he can glean any more than the yearning already deep in his own chest. “Yeah,” Eddie’s mouth quirks up into a smile, stepping in slightly closer, for what Richie assumes is to eventually leave the doorway. “Thank you, asshole.”  


That’s when he kisses him.  


For all he’s thought about a moment like this, Richie doesn’t know what else to do outside of completely freezing. Eddie’s hands are warm where they rest on his cheeks, and it makes Richie hyper aware of everything; his lips feel too chapped, his hands are sweaty where they rest half-raised at his sides, it’s hot all over.  


Eddie starts to pull back, and that’s what it takes to snap Richie back into focus.  


They barely get a chance to take a breath before Richie steps in and kisses _ him _, the weight of decades behind him. Both of them stumble back with the force of it, only stopped by Eddie managing to catch himself on the door frame, startling a laugh out of him. Richie regains feeling in his hands when they press against Eddie’s cheeks, the back of his neck, up into his hair.  


He has always towered over him, but this is perhaps the first time he feels about to truly engulf him.  


They kiss like it’s the end of the fucking world, until Richie finally notices the lightheadedness really starting to come on, and he gives them both just enough room required to breathe.  


It’s quiet. Eddie’s hand softly traces along the back of Richie’s neck, and Richie has to make a physical effort not to shiver.  


“I would’ve given you the suitcase a lot sooner if I had-”  


“Richie,” Eddie cuts him off, “I’ll kill you if you don’t shut up.”  


Richie grins and forces himself to take a deeper breath, a not insignificant part of him wondering if this is the awful moment when he’s finally going to wake up from the longest dream of his life. Eddie pulls him back down and they kiss in a way that is almost calm, but desperation still leaks in at the edges.  


They must stand there for ages, with time feeling like it slows to a stop around them, kissing like it's the only thing they know how to do. Richie takes a step in closer, close enough that he can feel the heat coming off Eddie’s body. There’s a thousand and one things he wants to do, to say, and it's such an overload he ends up just switching onto autopilot, moving and holding in whatever way keeps Eddie closest to him.  


And Eddie-- Richie loves him so much. The thought appears again and again, periodic exclamations every time Eddie’s grip tightens in his hair, every time he starts to pull back and gets immediately yanked back in. Richie loves him so much he’s ready to burst with it.  


Slowly, Richie’s hands gain the confidence to move lower than just the back of Eddie’s neck, delicately mapping out his shoulders, his chest, down to his stomach. He takes another half step closer, just enough to slot his thigh in between Eddie’s legs; and Eddie nearly shoots up the wall, hands bunched into fists in Richie’s shirt, against his chest.  


Eddie is on the live wire with him. Trying to have any level of restraint concurrent to realizing that is as hard as wrestling with an actual wild animal. For at least a few moments, though, Richie has it under control; he focuses solely on Eddie’s face, one hand coming back to frame the side of his face.  


“How do you-” Richie’s voice is much more ragged than he was ready for it to be; he feels his face heat up again before he clears his throat. “What do you want to-?”  


For a moment, they both just stand there, panting and still clinging to each other like horny teenagers. Eddie’s face is red too, and he goes between staring back at him and dropping back to looking specifically at Richie’s mouth. Richie has never in his life felt half as important as he does in that moment.  


Eddie finally just laughs, still breathless, mouth briefly gaping before he whispers, “I just need to- I want to keep touching you.”  


Richie can do that. Richie is more than capable of doing that. He kisses Eddie one more time, hard, before grabbing him by the shirt and dragging them both into the bedroom proper. They trip over each other the entire way there, and Eddie is laughing again by the time Richie picks him up and sets him on the bed. The fact that he can just _ do that _\- he’s so turned on it feels like he’s going to pass out.  


Once they’re mostly settled, Richie climbs onto the bed and kisses him again with identical urgency to before, slotted carefully between Eddie’s legs. He can’t move fast enough to get his hands back on him, finally pushing Eddie’s shirt up enough to touch skin. Eddie almost jumps off the bed when Richie’s hands close around his hips, and Richie feels his heart practically in his throat.  


In the back of his mind, he wonders exactly how long they’d been dancing around this, almost painfully, almost intentionally intricate. How long had Eddie been staring back at him like that?  


And in real time, Eddie is moving like he’s going to die if he stops. He pushes Richie back just enough to pull his shirt off over his head, and now Richie feels like _ he’s _ going to die too. He looks for as long as he can stand before dipping down and pressing his mouth against the tattoos on Eddie’s chest like he’s fucking dreamed about doing for what feels like half of his life. Eddie squirms underneath him, breath coming out in short, clipped bursts, one hand on the bed and the other in Richie’s hair and both in an absolute death grip.  


Richie is almost giddy. He could very gladly spend the next week like this, leaving bites and kisses over him in a way that borders on obsessive. He’s waited too long to entertain the idea of rushing this, despite how much he wants to, if nothing more than out of fear of not getting another chance.   


Eventually, Eddie grabs Richie up by the shirt collar again and kisses him; Richie goes lightheaded again, like it’s the first time it’s happened. He makes a noise in the back of his throat when he feels his glasses being taken off, and his shirt very quickly follows (and _ that’s not fair _ , because Richie is the only one of them that _ looks _ forty, but you wouldn’t be able to tell that from the way Eddie is kissing him).  


Eddie gives him a firm push that lands Richie on his back and has Eddie hovering over him. Prettiest blur he’s ever seen, hands down. Eddie hands him back his glasses pretty quickly, though, and barely waits for Richie to put them back on and get his bearings before coming down and kissing him again. Richie sighs with a lovesick smile, pushing one hand through Eddie’s hair slowly, nails softly scratching scalp.  


In his own head, he isn’t that keyed up. He’s kissing Eddie, and it’s heaven, and he’s already running a victory lap around his living room, and he’s _ handling it _ . And then Eddie’s hand somehow gets between them, just presses against his dick, and Richie only _ barely _ doesn’t come in his pants from just that.  


He drops his head back against the bed, trying to take deep breaths and remember what fucking year it is. Unsexy thoughts. “Jesus fucking shit, dude.”  


Eddie just stares at him, and the look on his face might as well say _ yeah, Eddie, you’re definitely the one who decided to kiss him _. “You gonna live, Tozier?”  


“Honestly? I’ll get back to you on that.” Richie wets his lips, which by this point have gone mostly numb. “I really might die on you here, Eds.”  


He’s not _ trying _ to joke, but most of the blood in his brain has gone completely south, and it’s the only thing keeping him from mindlessly pushing up into Eddie’s hand- which is not moving, but still very much on him. For his part, Eddie closes his eyes for a moment, completely stone-faced, before nodding “mm-hm” and kissing the side of Richie’s mouth. His hand moves, but it’s to work at untangling the drawstrings of Richie’s pants.  


“Like, seriously, if you breathe on me wrong, these sweats are fucked.”  


Eddie shakes his head, mouth twitchy where he’s trying not to smile. “You really have such a way with words, you know? Always poetry.”  


“_ You _ kissed _ me _, loverboy.”  


“Yeah, yeah, and you were really complaining five seconds ago-- _ what fucking Gordian knot _ is _ this_?”  


Richie picks his head slightly up off the bed. “Need scissors?”  
  


That one gets him a hard smack to the stomach, which makes him jump before it makes him snicker. And then he looks down and notices Eddie’s hands, softly, are shaking, and the humor drains from him in an instant.  


“Hey, hey,” Richie sits up and takes both of Eddie’s hands. He can’t think of the last time he’s done this. Not since Neibolt. _ You’re braver than you think _ . Richie tells himself to shut the fuck up. “You do _ not _ need to be forcing yourself to do this.”  


He can hear Eddie’s breath hitch, and after a moment, he turns his hands to slide their fingers together. “Fuck you, I’m not forcing it,” he mutters, still panting, and there’s no venom to the words to put Richie on the defensive. “I’m not scared, it’s- it’s adrenaline. If _ you _ need to slow down, that’s one thing, but I might actually strangle you if you try and put the brakes on on _ my _ fucking behalf. Okay?”  


Only Eddie would have the brain function to use words like _ behalf _ after making out as long as they have been and getting half undressed; Richie is still only 60% sure he knows his own name. But Eddie has always been aggressively vocal, among many other things-- there’s no way he would let Richie get away with anything he didn’t also want.  


A bit of his own self doubt comes bubbling at the back of Richie’s throat, but he swallows it back down. He’s not going to get in his own way _ again _.  


Richie nods in understanding, squeezing Eddie’s hands and trying not to fixate on how _ small _ they are, and presses his mouth against the man’s chest. Almost in spite of how quickly he’d sobered up and gotten serious, he’s still embarrassingly turned on. He presses kisses up along Eddie’s neck and only then lets go of his hands, undoing his pants himself. It’s only a little funny that it takes him at least a full minute to do, but he can plead to being distracted.  


Eddie’s hands, meanwhile, trace down along Richie’s shoulders, down his back, feather-light and creating goosebumps everywhere. When Richie’s hands go to Eddie’s waist, Eddie gets right back at it. He moves a little bit back, just enough to give himself room, while his hands finally go tantalizingly lower. Richie hears him mumble “-fucking thinks I’d have my hand on his dick against my will”, and he starts laughing so hard that when Eddie finally puts a hand around him, it’s like all the air is vaccumed straight from his lungs. He can’t breathe and it’s marvelous.  


Later- tomorrow, next week, three hours from now- Richie is going to set aside enough time that he can do this right for Eddie, or at least be competent enough to go five minutes without grinding up into him like he’s in college again. But there’s no way he can do that _ now _, and it at least seems like Eddie is in the same boat. When Richie can think for more than quick three-second bursts, he can finally get Eddie’s pants undone, and the noise Eddie makes when Richie finally touches him is like a fucking homecoming.  


In a world where time is an actual, functioning thing, they probably have their hands down the other’s pants for five minutes, and that’s if you’re being generous. Richie still holds out for much longer than he thought he would’ve. He leaves a considerable bruise on Eddie’s shoulder, worn darker from biting down in an effort to keep himself even remotely a quiet; an effort that fails spectacularly. And while his arm is moving on purely it’s own volition, Eddie tenses up in his grip, and Richie hears his own name littered in among the obscenities and gasps.  


They never get completely quiet, but the space where they just breathe together, burning hot to the touch and panting, is perhaps the most intimate thing Richie could ever conceive of.  


He wraps his arms around Eddie’s waist and pulls him good and proper into his lap, despite the immediate protests from Eddie that ends in a quiet groan of defeat.  


“This is so uncomfortable.”  


“Should’ve thought about that before jizzing in your pants.”  


“Shut the _ fuck _ up, Richie.”  


Richie gives it his best effort not to laugh, to mixed results. After a moment of just sitting there, relaxing in the hazy sluggishness, he does give Eddie the room he needs to stand; Eddie makes a point to run his hand through Richie’s hair in the wrong direction before fumbling off the bed. Richie watches him absolutely shamelessly as he grabs another pair of boxers and sweats and leaves for the bathroom.  


The moment Eddie leaves the room, Richie falls back against the bed, completely convinced he’s died in his sleep. He’s still on fire everywhere Eddie’s hands has touched him, mouth still half numb and breath shallow. His back hurts. He hasn’t felt this alive in ages.  


Richie pulls himself up the bed to rest against the pillows, and then he just waits there, half asleep, until Eddie comes back in, drying his hands on the bottom of his shirt. It hits Richie again, how absolutely gone he is for him, and it’s perhaps the only time he’s thought about it and smiled.  


Eddie is quiet when he sits down next to Richie, close enough that their legs touch. It takes Richie a second to realize he’s trying to gauge Richie’s reactions; how close he _ should _ be, if at all. His chest tightens a little at that, both in fondness and worry.  


He waits until Eddie finally glances up at him, forehead creased with what might as well be signature worry, before he cups his face and kisses him again. Tension unwinds out of both of them. And then Richie starts smiling, wide and toothy, and that gets things back to a vague sense of normality.  


“If you’re laughing at me I’ll-”  


“-fucking kill me, I know,” Richie relaxes into the bed, “You keep teasing me with it, Eds, and I’m starting to think you’re just gonna blue balls me.”  


Eddie gets a look on his face like he’s remembering that this is absolutely his life now and he can’t decide if he loves it or hates it. And Richie is still just smiling like an idiot. It’s all par for the course.   


“You’re the worst,” Eddie finally mumbles, laying down next to Richie with a noiseless yawn.  


He nods in concurrence and wraps an arm around Eddie’s waist, tugging him right up against his chest. It definitely feels like it’s going to earn him a complaint, but it never comes. Eddie puts his arm around Richie’s neck, and for once Richie can stomach it to be quiet too.

  
  


\--

  
  
  


Richie wakes up a few hours later, and Eddie is still in his arms, hand loosely fisted in his shirt, and he feels whole.

**Author's Note:**

> eddie: makes a joke about kissing richie post-deadlights  
me: ah, he knows about the next reddie fic i have planned
> 
> follow my twitter @riseofinnpoe , and any and all comments are such a motivation boost i cannot overstate how much they mean <3


End file.
